Welcome to ...

The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth. Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

When Monty Python Took American Television to Court

The TV show Monty Python's Flying Circus
aired on the BBC from 1969 to 1974. By 1974, some PBS stations in the
U.S. were rebroadcasting the show, where it gathered a small but
dedicated fan base. Eventually, ABC saw the value in the show. The
network acquired the right to six episodes (which they were to present
in two 90-minute specials) from Time-Life, which had gotten the rights
from the BBC, which had an agreement with Monty Python that no episodes
would ever be re-edited. You might see where this is going. ABC, as an
American broadcast network, felt the need to heavily edit the British
humor for American viewing -and to squeeze plenty of ads in.

When
the special aired at 11:30 p.m. on October 3, 1975, 22 minutes had been
clipped from the original material. Gone was a cat used as a doorbell; a
mention of “colonic irrigation” had also disappeared. ABC’s censors had
snipped several “Good Lords,” “damns,” and other near-profanities. Any
mentions of pooping were also trimmed. For Python fans, it was something
akin to comedy castration.
The group didn’t learn the full
extent of ABC’s meddling until late November, when they were shown a
tape of the edited broadcast. Outraged, they demanded that ABC not
re-air it.
The network had planned something worse: A second
special was due in December, with the remaining three episodes due to be
spliced in a similar manner.
With just days before that second
program was scheduled to air, the Pythons filed a lawsuit seeking an
injunction against ABC. They wanted their work removed from American
broadcast television.